Friday, April 21, 2017

National soccer as part of the nationalist myth

We have been raised in modern times as having one nation with one flag,
one anthem, one army, one currency, one language... and also one soccer
national team and one soccer national league. In the last decades, the
notion has been eroded, at least in Europe, by the creation of a shared
common currency, shared military alliances, the expansion of
multilinguism and the integration of societies and economies... and the
UEFA Champions League in soccer. The recent surge of nativist movements
is perhaps a desperate reaction against these trends. Still, national
soccer teams and national leagues have too much appeal (to my taste) to
believe that the forces of internationalism are prevailing. Although
soccer has become a global industry and fans follow all great games from
any place in the world, national institutions still have too much power
and are a barrier to the expansion of a more attractive soccer. Of
course, the removal of these barriers should go hand in hand with a
removal of the absolute power of FIFA, perhaps with the creation of a
more professional and globally regulated body. I am relatively
optimistic about the decline of most national leagues. Only a few of
them can survive as relevant in an integrated industry. Even if now the
English Premier League looks as dominant, we still have to see how it
will survive if Brexit becomes a true hard Brexit (to be seen). If it
does survive, the other European leagues will have to decide how to put
up a better European league, perhaps a super-league where we see all
year around games like the ones we see from the quarter finals to the
final of the Champions League every year (only two months of really good
games). I am more pessimistic about the decline of national teams.
Tournaments between national teams have become more and not less
competitive and interesting, because as Branko Milanovic
once argued, the institutional rules are such that all good players
from any country can only play for one national team, so most of them
benefit from having a more competitive industry at the club level, which
delivers best top players for every country. Hopefully, games between
national teams will become like games of "Calcio Storico" in Florence or
Siena: fights between two teams wearing clothes with meaningless
colours.